A Manhattan Ghost Story (7 page)

I said it to her after lovemaking, a couple of days into our relationship. I thought that that was probably the best of times to say
I love you
; I figured that most people said it then. So I said it to her. When the screeching and sweating and fun were over and we’d become civilized human beings once again, I whispered, “Phyllis, I love you.” I wasn’t sure that I meant it; I
was
sure that I
would
mean it, in time, which is all that really mattered.

She was straddling me. She liked to straddle me. I liked it, too.

I felt her stiffen up.

“I really do, Phyllis,” I added. It was dark in the room. She likes to make love in the dark. I don’t. My hands were on her upper arms, and I could feel her muscles go taut and her knees close hard on the lower part of my ribcage, which began to hurt at once.

She growled.

No, it wasn’t a growl. It was a hum. A low, ragged hum. I thought for a moment that she was going to sing again, as she had our first night together, but she didn’t sing. Her knees continued to close hard on my ribcage.

“That hurts, you know,” I said.

She continued humming.

I slipped out of her then. “You don’t want me to say ‘I love you,’ Phyllis?”

Her knees closed harder.

I was having trouble breathing. The pressure her knees were putting on my ribcage was in turn putting pressure on my diaphragm.

“You can cut that out now, Phyllis,” I managed, and pretended to chuckle.

That’s when she stopped. And it’s when I got angry.

 “Christ, Phyllis! Jesus Christ—you act like I insulted you. Christ!” I massaged my ribcage.

She got off me, stood at the side of the bed for a moment, with her back turned. She laughed a low, soft, quick laugh; it sounded just like it was coming from another room.

I remember it gave me a chill.

“Aren’t you even going to apologize, Phyllis?”

“I don’t give apologies anymore, Abner. I’m through giving apologies to anyone.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t want to fight.

She left the room then. I stayed in bed, massaging my ribs, and felt very confused for a long while.

Upon reflection, I don’t believe that I loved her that first time I told her I loved her. I believe that I
wanted
her, but not that I loved her. She didn’t seem quite vulnerable enough, and that—vulnerability, or at least the pretense of it—is something I’ve always enjoyed in a woman.

I actually began loving her, I think, two days later, when she brought her parents over to meet me.

They were there, in the apartment, seated with Phyllis at the dining room table when I got home from a day’s shooting in Central Park. I saw that they’d been eating something that looked like crumb cake—a small slice of it was left in a pie tin on the table.

Phyllis’ father was a tall and awkward-looking man. His skin was a light gray-brown in color, and he was, I guessed, well into his sixties. He had large, round eyes set in a huge, skeletal head that seemed to bob slightly, and at random, as if the connection at the neck were weak.

Phyllis’ mother was much like Phyllis herself. She was tall, though not quite as tall as her daughter, and exquisite-looking, with just the whisper of age around her eyes and mouth. She spoke in a low, soft voice that was fully as sensuous as her daughter’s and also without a trace of accent.

Phyllis said, as soon as I came in, “Abner, these are my parents. This is my mother; her name is Lorraine.” Lorraine said hello and smiled pleasantly. “And this is my father, whose name is Thomas.”

I came forward, extended my hand. “Hello, Mr. Pellaprat.” He stood, took my hand; his grip was very strong.

“Hello, Abner Doubleday,” he began. He spoke at a level that was close to a shout, and I guessed that he was hard-of-hearing. “How are you?” He grinned a huge, toothy grin.

“Cray,” I corrected. “My name is Abner W. Cray.”

“Yes,” he said, grinning wider. “Abner Doubleday. Hello.” He let go of my hand and sat down again.

I pardoned myself then, to use the bathroom and to put my camera gear away. When I returned ten minutes later, Phyllis motioned me to sit at the end of the table opposite her. I did it. She said, “I wanted you to meet them, Abner. I wanted them to meet you.”

“Yes,” I said, nodding at Lorraine Pellaprat and then at her husband. “Of course. I’m really very glad to meet you both.” The odor of damp wood was very strong. I supposed that it was a kind of family odor—something all of them shared.

Mr. and Mrs. Pellaprat were dressed nicely, she in a well-cut herringbone-tweed pants suit, and he in a dark blue suit, which was clearly not something off-the-rack, and black, highly polished wingtips. Phyllis had put a fussy white blouse on, and a knee-length, black pleated skirt and beige sandals. I thought they were a good-looking family, if just a tad stiff.

Lorraine Pellaprat told me, “We’ve been having a little snack,” and nodded at the pie-tin, which was now empty.

“But it’s all gone,” said Thomas Pellaprat. “So I’m afraid we can’t share it with you, much as we’d like to.”

“You wouldn’t enjoy it anyway,” Lorraine said. “It’s an acquired taste.”

I nodded at her plate, which had some remnants in it. “Crumb cake?” I asked.

“Certainly,” she answered, and a little pleased smile creased her mouth. “Crumb cake. Our own recipe.” Her smile broadened quickly, then quickly flickered out.

“You are a photographer?” Thomas Pellaprat asked, almost at a shout. “Tell me, please—why do you do that?”

“I’m sorry?” I answered. His question confused me.

“Why do you take photographs, Mr. Doubleday?  Why do you take photographs? Is it to capture the past?”

“It’s my job—”

“Because if it is to capture the past, Mr. Doubleday—”

“
Cray
, please. Not Doubleday. I know that the two sound pretty much alike.”

“Then you do not need a camera for that,” he finished, ignoring my interruption. “And what does a camera give you anyway? It gives you
images
; it gives you
illusions
.”

“Of course,” I began, “but they are fairly true illusions—?

“Like our crumb cake,” he cut in, and smiled his huge, toothy smile, which seemed to announce loudly that he was suddenly very proud of himself.

Lorraine looked over at him, her face blank. And Phyllis looked over at him, too.

“Like the crumb cake?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

Silence.

“Phyllis?” I coaxed.

She turned to look at me. So did her mother. And then her father. Their mouths opened a little. Their eyes seemed to be in a kind of twilight, half in sleep.

And I felt suddenly as if I were all alone in that room.

“Phyllis?” I coaxed again, and I studied her face. I thought, strangely, that the beauty had gone out of it, that it seemed somehow flat, unresponsive.

That’s when I said it the second time, out of desperation, I think. “Phyllis, I love you!”

It got no reaction.

I said it again. “Phyllis, I love you; I do love you.”

Her mouth moved. I heard words come from it—these words: “
Do
you love me, Abner?”

I felt a smile flicker across my lips. “I
do
love you, Phyllis.” It was as if my words could pull her back from some abyss. “Oh, yes, I
do
love you, Phyllis.”

She said it again, as if she were pleading with me. “
Do
you love me, Abner?”

And I said, “Yes, Phyllis, I
do
love you—” And I heard: “Oh, you
must
come and see us, Mr. Doubleday.” I shifted my gaze. Lorraine Pellaprat was smiling very broadly and pleasantly at me. “You
must
come and see us, Mr. Doubleday, very soon.”

“Yes,” I said tentatively. “I’d like that.”

“Some evening very soon.”

“I’d like that very much.”

“
Tomorrow
evening, Mr. Doubleday.”

“Tomorrow? I don’t know; I’m not sure—”

“Tomorrow evening at 8:30.” She stood. Her husband stood, although a little unsteadily because his chair nearly fell backwards to the floor; he caught it. Lorraine went on, “Phyllis will show you the way.”

“Of course,” I said.

“We’re on East 95th Street, Mr. Doubleday. Phyllis will show you the way.”

They rounded the table together and started for the door. Phyllis stood. I stood. Phyllis took my arm and led me to the door with them.

“Tomorrow, then,” Lorraine Pellaprat said.

“Yes,” I said, “tomorrow.”

Thomas Pellaprat extended his hand; I took it. “Good to meet you, Mr Doubleday.”

“And you, too, Mr. Pellaprat.”

“Until tomorrow, then?”

“Yes, tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Of course you are.”

They left the apartment. Phyllis and I stood in the doorway together and watched as they walked to the elevator. We watched, smiling, as they waited. And,’ at last, when the elevator came, they waved, and we waved, and the aged man who had been working the elevator a week earlier—and whom I hadn’t seen since—stuck his head out. “Hello, sir,” he said to me. And I nodded at him and said, “Hello.”

I am not going to try and make you believe that what follows is a love story. Because it’s so much more than that.

When I hear the words
love story
, I think of Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, Taylor and Burton, Streisand and Redford. I do not think of Abner W. Cray and Phyllis Pellaprat.

CHAPTER TWELVE

At the Hammet Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

I asked Sam again, “Is that some kind of trick-candle or something, Sam?” because it went out a third time, and he relit it.

“Could be,” he said. “But it ain’t.”

“Then what keeps blowing it out, for crimey’s sake?” I shifted a little on the cold cement floor because my legs had started to go to sleep.

“Spooks and demons,” Sam answered.

“I don’t think I believe in demons, Sam. I don’t even know what a demon is. And maybe I believe in spooks, and maybe I don’t, but I sure don’t think they’d hang around here.”

“Who’s to say?” he asked. “Not me and not you, that’s for certain.”

We were both seated cross-legged on the floor.

Sam lifted one cheek then, and a long, noisy fart came from him. He looked pleased.

I waved at the air. “Jees, that stinks.”

“We can light ‘em,” he said.

“Shit,” I said.

“Light the old demon farts.” He chuckled. “Light the demon’s breath!” He chuckled again, though lower in his throat, as if to himself. “Demon fire!” he whispered tightly.

“I wanta leave,” I said.

“I have demon fire in my shorts.”

“You’re being real stupid, Sam.”

He reached out, stroked the cat’s skull very slowly and lovingly. “You’re a nice cat, Flora,” he said several times as he stroked it. “You’re a nice cat, Flora.”

“You’re giving me the creeps, goddamnit!” I said.

“You’re supposed to have the creeps,” he said. “We’re sitting in here with a bunch of dead people, so you’re supposed to have the creeps.”

“I wanta leave,” I said again.

“Go ahead.”

“I mean it,” I said.

“No, you don’t. You don’t mean it.”

And he was right. I didn’t mean it.

In Manhattan, January 23, 1983

It was a little past 7:00 when Phyllis and I left Art DeGraff’s apartment to catch a bus for her parents’ home on East 95th Street. She seemed very excited, and I realized that it was the first time we’d been out of the apartment together.

She had dressed warmly—although it was an unseasonably mild evening—in a stylish, white, waistlength mink coat (“Fake,” she told me, “but don’t let on.”), a mid-calf-length green dress, and white, knee-high boots with stacked heels. She looked very sexy.

“You look sexy as hell, Phyllis,” I told her. We were walking east on East 79th Street, arm in arm.

“Thank you, Abner.” She seemed pleased. “Tonight is very special.”

“Yes,” I said. “I think so, too.”

“They didn’t like Art.”

“Your parents, you mean?”

She nodded. “They didn’t approve of him. Because he was white.”

“I’m white, Phyllis.”

“And because he had money.”

“I have money, too. Not as much as Art does, it’s true—”

“And because he liked to hit me.”

“He hit you?”

“With his fist. When he got angry.”

“Christ, I had no idea, Phyllis.”

“He got angry once because his team lost the Super Bowl. He threw me across the room, and then he hit me. Three times. Twice in the face. And then in the stomach. He had to take me to the hospital.”

“My God, I never realized Art was like that, Phyllis. I mean, when he was married to Stacy—”

She cut in, “I remember the hospital. It was on the Lower East Side. St. Ignatius. I remember it smelled bad. I remember it was noisy. And I remember I hurt.”

I looked at her. She was staring straight ahead.

“I remember I hurt,” she repeated. She was speaking in a dead, husky monotone. “I never hurt like that before. Not like that. And I knew that Art had done something bad to me. Something no one was ever going to be able to fix.”

I grinned at her, though she wasn’t looking at me. I said, “Well, thankfully, Phyllis, they
did
—”

“I heard them say that he’d broken my jaw and that he’d ruptured my spleen, too.” I noticed then that she was walking very stiffly, as if she were in pain; I asked her if she was all right, and she ignored me. “They said my spleen had to come out. ‘It’s got to come out,’ they said. So they took it out. And then I heard them say that I had lost a lot of blood, too much blood.” We were closing on the bus stop; there were a half-dozen people clustered at it, and one of them, a young black man smoking a cigarette and wearing a gray sports jacket and black scarf, who was hugging himself for warmth—which I thought was odd, because it wasn’t a cold evening—looked over, smiled, and nodded.

Someone else at the bus stop said loudly, “There it is,” and pointed. I looked and saw our bus a block-and-a-half away. “We’d better hurry up, Phyllis,” I said, and walked faster. She kept pace with me. She said, “Too much blood. That’s what I heard them say: ‘Too much blood.’ And I remember looking down at myself and thinking, ‘Gee, that really is too much blood …” The young man in the gray sports jacket and black scarf tossed his cigarette down, smiled and nodded again. It was then that I realized he was nodding at Phyllis.